


Pieces

by Legendaerie



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Child Abuse, F/M, Mild Blood, Missing Scene, Pre-Relationship, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 17:39:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13529289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: Chase lays himself bare for Gert. And her dinosaur.(set during s1ep8 - spoilers inside)





	Pieces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moriuh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moriuh/gifts).



> WHERE DID HIS BLOOD AND INJURIES GO, HULU, DO I HAVE TO WRITE EVERYTHING MYSELF
> 
> posting this on my phone bc I'm too depressed to turn on my PC, lmao, but thanks for the OVERWHELMING response on the other piece. don't have anything else planned for this pair ATM but I can't turn down some hurt/comfort, I CAN'T.

 

“You're bleeding,” Gert says softly, and there's suddenly a lot of things for Chase to unpack at once. In order from least to most shocking; his dad tried to kill him, his mom tried to kill his dad, Gert said something gentle to him, and there is a dinosaur in his bedroom.

Chase touches the trail of blood behind his ear and finds it tacky to the touch. “It's--”

Part of him forgot about it. Most of him is preoccupied with how much of the blood is his dad’s, on his knees, his shins, his hands.

“It's drying up.”

“It's gonna get infected,” ah, there's the familiar bite to her words, and Chase clings to those angry syllables as though they could pull him into a reality where the lacrosse championship was the biggest of his concerns. “And then you're going to be sick and miserable and scar.”

“Scars are cool?” he asks.

Gert frowns, and her dinosaur snarls for her. “Scars are just proof that someone's a dumbass who didn't seek proper medical attention.”

He throws one last look over his shoulder to where Karolina was talking downstairs - he has to pivot in place, his neck hurts to move - and then pulls off his shirt. It's not sexy, even if he’s sucking in his stomach as he does it. It's awkward because his arms are stiff from being blown back by his Fistigons and it gets stuck for long enough he has to stop halfway to think about the easiest way to get it off.

When he finally frees himself from polyester purgatory, it takes him a moment to meet Gert’s eyes. He’s already working on some kind of pithy response, something that plays off her little ogling with the goggles, but he looks at her face and his heart stops.

Chase follows her gaze down to his body then checks his mirror on the other side of the room. A slow turn, looking at the minefield of cuts down his back, the flecks glass embedded in his arm, the angry red of tomorrow’s deep tissue bruises, and he gets it. It’d break his heart to see a friend like this, too.

Especially Gert.

“Don't ask. Not yet.” There's too much going on in his head. Fitting that he might have a concussion, for the whiplash he feels at his father’s moods in the past week. Love and hate are warring in his heart, and there's no way that he can translate all of tonight into something easily digestible right now. “Where do you want me?”

“Uh, bed. Um. So you can lay down. Where’s your first aid kit?”

“Down the hall. Under the bathroom sink. I can get it--”

Halfway to the door, Gert snaps her fingers and points to the floor. “Nuh uh. Stay.”

He gapes at her. She meets his eyes.

“No, no, I was talking to the dinosaur.”

Right. He’d forgotten. It's just been that kind of night.

She’s already out the door by the time it registers that she’s leaving him in the room with the damn thing, and if he could feel any more adrenaline Chase would be freaking out. Instead he just gives the animal a weary look.

“If you're gonna do it, just be quick about it,” he mutters, and eases himself down on the bed.

Truth is, it's not even the worst he’s had. It looks bad, sure, but it's all surface stuff. Soft tissue damage and superficial cuts. Once the glass it out it’ll look no different than the one’s his dad has given him all his life. And aside from the gun, Gert, and the dinosaur, this evening really wasn't that unfamiliar.

Victor Stein calls himself mercurial. Chase used to hate that word for sounding so elegant when it meant a lifetime of fear and self doubt. But now it makes him think of the metal, how it’s beautiful and toxic at once, and he thinks it fits his father just fine.

Gert returns, carrying the first aid box. She sits beside him, her weight dipping the mattress, and Chase lets himself lean into her just a little. Blame gravity. Blame nature. Deep down, he just wants someone to hold him in a way that isn't meant to mould him or subdue him.

Most of the glass came out with the shirt but Gert still takes tweezers to his wounds - the feel of the cool metal inside the cuts is unsettling, and it's impossible not to flinch. Once or twice she grabs some skin and he winces, but there's no harsh words between them. Only silence.

His voice is muffled by the mattress. “Talk.”

“What?”

“Can you talk,” Chase repeats, tilting his head to rest on his cheek.

Gert huffs. Splutters. “Oh, _now_ you want me to talk?”

“Yes. Something. Just-- so I don't have to think about,” and he swings his better arm up to point a thumb at his back, “this.”

“Okay, um…”

He doesn't know where she’s putting the bits of glass. Maybe just holding it in the palm of her hand, little blood red diamonds. Hopefully she doesn't cut herself on them. Enough blood’s been spilled tonight, and he doesn't ever want to be the reason that she’s hurt. Not like that.

“Talk about your dinosaur,” he throws out, staring across the room at it. It's settled down next to his ruined fig bush, nosing the plant occasionally. “Isn't it supposed to eat meat?”

“She. It's a she. And she does, but lots of carnivores eat plant matter occasionally. When they're sick sometimes, or just bored. I can get you a new one or whatever. Could probably get a cutting from the same plant. Dr. Neoton’s been using it for all her horticulture classes for the past ten years, anyway.”

“You remember how I got that plant?” he asks

“Of course I do,” Gert snaps, back to her work. “I was in the same class.”

He knows. He remembers. Her hair wasn't purple yet, but he remembers sitting behind her and two chairs to the right, fantasizing about flicking the little curls at the ends of her hair that never seemed to want to go the same direction. Some went in like a bob, some curled out like a duck’s tail, and something about that disobedience had made it hard to pay attention to the lecture.

“Thanks.” It would be nice for that to happen. For, somehow, their lives to go back to some state where their biggest concerns were grades and what their classmates thought of them. For Gert to be in his bedroom doing something other than picking glass out of his back with her guard dinosaur watching them with one yellow-green eye.

He’ll blame the adrenaline for this, or the dinosaur. Something else for this moment of weakness as he lays under her, the pain a dull ping like a drop of rain, the click of the tweezers

“Do you still wonder if they’re all bad?” Chase asks. “Our parents.”

Any other night, he doesn't doubt that she'd have some long winded pithy lecture about morality and the duality of human nature, but she must feel the difference too. Because her reply is, “I wish they were. It would make it easier, wouldn't it?”

Gert always has something insightful to say, and her words help distract from the sting of the antiseptic she wipes around his cuts. “If we could just-- hate them. If they were completely evil all of the time. But maybe we’d still love them anyway, because of biology or familiarity or some other bullshit.”

Her last words give him pause, and he pushes himself up on one arm to look at her.

“You think love is bullshit?” he asks, his heart sinking into his chest for reasons he refuses to examine.

“I think--” and she opens and closes her mouth once or twice, stammering Chase finds himself staring at her lips. “I think certain-- elements of the human condition are-- hyped more than others, but-- why, do you?” Her tone breaks into petulance at the end, one hand cupping the pieces of glass from his wounds close to her heart.

Any other night, he would have said yes.

“No.” He looks up to meet her eyes. “I don't think it is.”

“You don't?” Gert leans in a little closer, so subtle he would have missed it if he hadn’t been watching her so intently.

Chase sits up a little bit more, slow and careful not to move his back too much. “I don't know if it's always good, though. It made my mom do terrible things.”

“Like have an affair?”

“Like stay with my dad.” There's just a few inches of space between them on the bed now, and he can’t stop looking at her fucking mouth. Her tongue is a weapon, more powerful than his Fistigons, but her lips look so soft he could forget the damage that tongue has dealt. To others. To him.

“Yeah,” and his eyes jump up to hers again, and he thinks she might be looking at his mouth too. “Love isn't bullshit. But it makes you put up with a lot of it.”

“Do you think--”

The door opens abruptly - he never even heard anyone come up the stairs, and his reaction is immediate. Chase jumps to his knees, twisting around and backing up on the bed to get between Gert and the door, shielding her with his body. If someone asks him to get out of the way this time, he’s not moving an inch.

It’s Karolina. “Whoa, hey, relax. Just me.” She does a double take. “Um… what's--?”

Across the room, Gert’s dinosaur snarls, and all at once Chase feels an idiot. He’d forgotten about both of them, so wrapped up in his conversation and--

“Sorry,” he mumbles to Gert, rolling off her. He hopes he didn’t any blood on her. “Just getting my back a little cleaned up.”

“Your b-- oh, god,” and Karolina blanches. “Uh, yeah, no, absolutely go back to getting that cleaned up. There's a really bad--”

He feels the bed recoil as Gert hops off of it. “You can do it,” she says, dumping the handful of glass in his trash can. “I've got all the hard work done for you, anyway. I'm going to go wash my hands,” and just that fast she’s gone, down the hallway again. Her dinosaur looks after her with a little whistling whine, but stays put.

Chase picks his shirt up off the floor, gives it an experimental shake, then tosses it into the trash can. Easier than trying to get the blood out and the cuts mended.

“So,” he says, feeling hollow as he pulls another shirt from his closet. “What's the plan?”

“Oh. Uh. Alex wants to meet us. He’s--”

“Fine.” Chase bites his tongue as he pulls a new shirt on. “Let’s--” He stops dead, hearing his father in his own tone. Amends it, feeling sick. “Let’s get Gert and get the hell out of here, okay?”

Karolina nods, her eyes drifting to the bed, but if she has anything to say she keeps it to herself. She’s been doing that a lot lately, and it stings to be excluded; but he used up all of his anger pushing her dad against the wall.

“I'm gonna be fine,” he promises her, and wishes it wasn't a lie. “It’ll heal.”

Some wounds never do.


End file.
